Cold Blooded
by sprl1199
Summary: Written for the Mentalist ficathon for oroburos69.  Prompt: "Jane manipulating the team into slaughtering Red John with extreme prejudice."  Warning: somewhat dark, though not gory.  Vague spoilers for season 2 finale.


Mentalist Fic: Cold Blooded

Written for the Mentalist Ficathon (community . livejournal . com / redjohnlovesyou) for oroburos69.

Prompt:

Character(s)/Pairing: JaneWhat you'd like to see: Jane manipulating the team into slaughtering Red John with extreme you don't want to see: Non-con, hypnotism

Author Note: Rated R for violence. About 2000 words. Thanks, as always, to the lovely and talented finangler for beta!

Spoilers: Potentially very vague ones for the season 2 finale.

Disclaimer: Not mine, and not for profit!

[Cold Blooded]

Her eyes were a light sky blue. Her hair, golden and wavy, lay strewn out around her as she stared sightlessly up at the ceiling.

She was 7 years old, and she was dead.

Jane stared for a moment, face utterly blank. Then he turned to Lisbon. The rest of the team was hovering just outside the doorway, watching him with eyes variously tinged with pity, sadness, and not a little wariness.

"I can't do this anymore," he said quietly. Lisbon drew in a breath to say something, her expression sympathetic.

He cut her off. "I'm done," he said with finality.

He turned and left the house, hearing but disregarding their calls after him.

He didn't actually see anyone from CBI until late the next day. When he opened his front door, Lisbon stood on his doorstep, hand still raised toward the doorbell as though she had forgotten to lower it. Her clothes were rumpled, and her hair was mussed. It didn't appear as though she'd slept at all in the roughly 30 hours since Jane had seen her last.

She looked haunted.

"We need your help," she said without preamble, green eyes dark with fear and anger. "A young boy has gone missing. Kidnapped, maybe."

She stopped and swallowed, her expression crumpling slightly.

"The missing boy is my nephew, Charlie."

Her voice broke slightly as she said his name, and she took a slow breath to center herself before looking Jane directly in the eye.

"We think it's Red John," she said, clearly taking refuge in the even, professional voice she'd perfected at hundreds of crime scenes in order to keep from breaking into tears. Or screams.

Jane made no move from where he stood in the doorway, eyes cast down to the ground. She frowned.

"Jane? Did you hear me?" A note of confusion had entered her voice. "We think it's Red John."

Jane looked up at last, face still disturbingly empty as it had been at the crime scene the day before.

"I can't help you," he said.

Without another word, he turned to reenter the house, and Lisbon grabbed his arm.

"Jane, please!" Her desperation was clear. "That monster has my nephew! I need your help!"

The look he gave her was cool, but not without sympathy. He gently detached her hand from where it was clenched around his bicep.

"I can't help you," he said again, just as quietly as before. "It's over Teresa. I can't take any more. I'm sorry, but I'm doing what I have to do."

He closed the door and locked it while she stood in disbelief. His receding footsteps echoed clearly back to her as he walked through the empty house.

Charlie Lisbon had gone missing from the yard behind the apartment complex he lived in with his mom at approximately 11:00 a.m. two days before. Ordinarily the three year old would never have been outside unsupervised, but the babysitter had run indoors briefly to grab her cell phone. When she came back out, Charlie was gone, and a plain sheet of white paper lay on the ground, a red smiley face grinning vividly from its center.

So far the CBI had kept the Red John connection classified, releasing to the media only the information typical for an Amber Alert and potential kidnapping case. Jane had learned the details from the voice mail messages Cho had left him over the day and a half since he had turned Lisbon away: voice calmly measured as he related the facts. The increasingly entreating recordings from Van Pelt he deleted without listening to, as he did with the single, vaguely threatening message from Rigsby.

From Lisbon there was nothing.

He reflected on families and breaking points as he sat on the single mattress in the bare room where his life had been so completely shattered, looking out the window at the moon above and absently twirling his cell phone in his hands.

When he heard the sound of footsteps methodically ascending the stairs, it didn't come as a surprise.

"Hello, Red John," he said, turning toward the figure who stood framed in the doorway, once again hidden under a trench coat and fedora. The mask was black this time, he noted absently; the gloves red. He imagined it was meant to have some symbolic significance, but he didn't waste time thinking on it.

It didn't matter anymore.

"Why, Mr. Jane, I'm disappointed," Red John said. "I had assumed you had more fortitude. I'm not quite ready to conclude our interactions."

The voice was as high-pitched and thin as it had been the day he had inexplicably cast himself as Jane's rescuer; his figure slender underneath the coat. Jane estimated him to be an inch or two taller than himself with long and wiry limbs. Other than a large, black duffle bag over one shoulder, he had nothing with him, and he appeared to be unarmed.

"I've never been good at meeting people's expectations of me," Jane said carelessly, rising to his feet.

"Yes, I can see that," Red John said. Jane had the feeling he was smiling. "Walking away from your pretty, little Lisbon when she needs you most."

"Reprehensible that the nephew of a law enforcement official could be snatched away so abruptly," the serial killer continued. He made a grasping gesture with his hand on 'snatched,' pantomiming how very easy it was to steal a child. His voice dropped sinisterly.

"Truly, this is an insidious world we live in." He had walked into the room as he spoke, and he and Jane now faced each other across a mere ten feet of bare, moon-beam illuminated floor.

"I couldn't agree more," Jane replied conversationally.

"I thought you might," Red John said with evident satisfaction.

The dark figure gestured toward Jane's hands. "I'll have that cell phone, Patrick."

Rather than giving any sort of objection, Jane shrugged and stooped, sliding the phone across the floor where Red John caught it with his boot.

He smashed it, the sound shockingly loud in the bare room.

"Good," Red John said. "Do you know what happens now?"

Jane again peered out the window at the night. "I suppose you're going to kill me?" he answered absently, demonstrating no concern over the concept.

"No," Red John answered with dark finality.

"I find you much too engrossing. But we can't have you giving up so soon. You don't know _what _I have planned for you."

He took a few steps toward Jane. "Clearly you need more incentive to continue your role in this pursuit."

Jane at last looked away from the window and stared at the killer, his hand held up to halt his advance.

"Actually, I have something to say to you."

Red John's voice was curious and slightly amused. "Oh? Will you rail at me for my crimes? Demand to know the whereabouts of Kristina Frye?"

His voice lowered as he took yet another step closer. "Ask me what I did to your wife and child in this very room...on this very night...eight years ago today?"

His measured steps had brought him within a hairsbreadth of Jane's hand, which was still outstretched as though in a warding gesture.

Jane went white at the mention of his family, but he made no movement. They stood there for a moment in reflection of one another: divided by moonlight and bound by a horror so profound, Jane could hardly bear to think on it, yet he knew that perhaps the only thing he _couldn't_ bear would be to forget.

Then he dropped his hand and stared intently at Red John.

"No," he said, voice rough. "That's not it."

"It took me an unforgivably long time, but I finally realized that-for all your cleverness-you had a pattern," he continued. His eyes burned in his pale face as he faced his tormentor.

"_Me_."

"I knew you would never be able to resist coming here. Not if you thought I might finally be truly broken, and especially not on the anniversary of the day you ripped my wife and child from this world to punish me."

He pulled up a pale shadow of his cocky grin. "You really are rather predictable, Red John."

Red John showed no sign of anger at the jab. When he responded, his voice was as even and soft as ever.

"You are correct that I was unable to pass up such a poetic setting: you here, alone in a crypt of your own making."

He raised his crimson gloved hand slowly as though to caress his victim's cheekbone, though he stopped short of touching him. Jane didn't flinch.

"And at the moment, of course, your team is far too occupied to come to your rescue."

He cocked his head slightly to the side as he assessed Jane. "I have you all to myself."

Jane smiled.

"Well, not exactly," he said.

At that moment two things happened: the front door was kicked in, Lisbon's cry of "Jane!" echoing through the empty house with the sound of a team of agents moving into position in response to the phone call Jane had made ten minutes before.

And Charlie Lisbon began to scream from where he was locked in the closet.

Red John started in shock, taking a step backward as his head swung wildly between the closet door and the hallway.

"You!" he gasped. He lunged frantically out of the room, Jane on his heels.

Red John reached the top of the stairway a moment ahead of Jane. The CBI agents were still gathered just inside the door, flashlights scanning the darkened foyer and guns at the ready.

Jane yelled frantically, "Oh God, _Charlie! Lisbon he has a gun!"_

_Jane ducked as the agents fired, and the flashes from the gunfire left blinding afterimages in his eyes. Despite them, he was able to see clearly as Red John was hit twice in the chest and fell backwards to lay in the hallway, breath rasping and blood sluicing down the folds of his coat to pool on the floor._

_Lisbon sprinted up the stairs, eyes wild. "Where's Charlie?" she demanded, taking no notice of the man broken and bleeding at her feet._

_"Bedroom," Jane croaked, eyes fastened on the scene he had been imagining for almost eight years. "He locked him in the closet."_

_Without another word, Lisbon ran down the hallway with Van Pelt on her heels, yelling for her nephew._

_Cho had also ascended the stairs. After looking at Jane with an unreadable expression, he turned to face down the hall to allow him the illusion of privacy for this final confrontation._

_Red John was still alive, though it was clear that he would not remain so for long._

_Jane could feel cruel satisfaction edge his smile at the thought. Though the eyes of the murderer were still hidden behind the mask, he knew with absolute certainty that they were focused on him. He rejoiced that his face would be the last that Red John would ever see._

_He leaned close and whispered in the dying man's ear._

_"I hope you rot in hell, you son of a bitch."_

_"You...also..." came Red John's final gasp of breath. He lay still, and Jane collapsed back on his heels, a marionette cut from its strings as the adrenaline that had been sustaining him finally subsided._

_"Very probably," Jane murmured to himself._

_He stood and brushed the dust from his pants. Stepping over the corpse of his enemy, he walked down the stairs and out the splintered front door, passing the paramedics who were only just arriving. No one made any move to stop him._

_The night was filled with a riot of flashing emergency lights, and he walked beyond the chaos before he stopped, breathing deeply and staring up at the night sky._

_His head was whirling, visions of his wife and daughter overlapping and mingling with images of Charlie. He saw the boy again, smiling happily in the passenger seat of Jane's car and kicking his feet to the oldies on the radio. He had been less easy to convince to hide in the dark closet, even with Jane assuring him it was all a game for his Aunt Teresa._

_Despite him trying to force his usually very obedient memory to focus on his last view of Red John's corpse, the one image he didn't want to see kept appearing behind his eyes: that evening on his porch and Lisbon's eyes bruised and terrified, already so close to the edge. He felt vaguely sick._

_Rigsby was outside overseeing the containment of the scene and jogged over when he saw Jane emerge from the house._

_"Thank God that psychopath didn't hurt Charlie while he had him and that we got your phone call in time to take him down before he did anything. I don't even want to think about what his plans were for the two of you." He stopped when he saw the expression on Jane's face._

"_Are you alright?" he asked quietly, carefully not encroaching on Jane's personal space._

"_Fine," Jane croaked, unsure if the tightness in his throat was emotion, or if he were at long last finding it difficult to lie. He realized he was trembling finely all over._

_Rigsby hesitated. "I know it's been a rough few days for all of us," he said, no doubt referring to Jane's abrupt resignation and the resulting tirade he had left on the consultant's phone. "But no matter what else happened, Red John is dead. He won't be able to hurt anyone ever again. That makes everything else seem like minor details, don't you think?"_

_Jane didn't respond, and after a few of minutes of silence, Rigsby was called back to the house._

_Jane remained standing in the yard._

"_I hope so," he answered belatedly._

_Only the night air heard him._


End file.
